Thursday, July 16, 2015

PENTECOST VIII 2015

Once again the agricultural world in which Jesus lived and
taught provides a central image for the Sunday readings – sheep and shepherds.
In the thematic Old Testament lessons, the passage from Jeremiah (reinforced by Psalm 23) uses this image to
lament the extent to which the leaders of the Israelites have abandoned their
God-given role to be ‘shepherds’ of the people. In the Gospel, Jesus relinquishes
his desire to retreat from the constant pressures of the crowds who seek his
help, because he suddenly sees them as ‘sheep without a shepherd’.

In the interpretation of this image and its applications in
Scripture, we must not suppose that sheep are useless without a
shepherd. On the contrary, they know how to cope with basic survival and
everyday life. They can secure grass to graze on and water to drink; they can
breed successfully and succor their young. It is vital needs beyond the
everyday that surpass their natural abilities -- distant sources of ‘living’
(i.e. fresh) water, and protection against climatic hazards and natural predators.
These are the deficiencies that the good shepherd supplies.

Paul Preaching at Ephesus Eustace Le Seur (1649)

By analogy, then, we should not think of
the crowd upon
which Jesus has compassion as a bunch of helpless children. These are
adults
with homes, families, skills and occupations. Yet they crowd around
Jesus
because the larger context within which this everyday life is set leaves
them at a loss. They know how to cope with ‘things temporal’, but
flounder when it
comes to ‘things eternal’ – the kind of life in which ultimately ‘true’
joys are to be
found.

In short, they (like us) need ‘revealed’ as well as ‘discovered’
truth. It is a contention that the ‘religions of the book’ – Judaism,
Christianity, Islam – hold in common. For Christians, though, the essential
revelation comes not only through the Word of God, but through the Person of
Christ – ‘the Word made Flesh’. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians underlines the profound significance of this shift. Whereas the religion of the book formerly constituted a dividing line between Jew and non-Jew, the possibility of a relationship with Christ overcomes any such division, so that Gentiles (foreigners) are'no longer strangers and aliens', but equally 'members of the household of God'.